18 January 2015 12:07 AM

Don't like the PC mob? Well now that makes you a terror threat

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column

We are on the verge of founding Britain’s first Thought Police. Using the excuse of terrorism – whose main victim is considered thought – Theresa May’s Home Office is making a law which attacks free expression in this country as it has never been attacked before.

We already have some dangerous laws on the books. The Civil Contingencies Act can be used to turn Britain into a dictatorship overnight, if politicians can find an excuse to activate it.

But the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, now slipping quietly and quickly through Parliament, is in a way even worse. It tells us what opinions we should have, or should not have.

As ever, terrorism is the pretext. Yet there is no evidence to suggest that the criminal drifters, school drop-outs and drug-addled losers who do much terrorist dirty work (and whose connections with vast worldwide conspiracies are sketchy to say the least) will be even slightly affected by it.

In a consultation paper attached to the Bill, all kinds of institutions, from nursery schools (yes really, see paragraph 107) to universities, are warned that they must be on the lookout for ‘extremists’.

But universities are told they have a ‘responsibility to exclude those promoting extremist views that support or are conducive to terrorism’.

Those words ‘conducive to’ are so vague that they could include almost anybody with views outside the mainstream.

What follows might have come from the laws of the Chinese People’s Republic or Mr Putin’s Russia. Two weeks’ advance notice of meetings must be given so that speakers can be checked up on, and the meeting cancelled if necessary.

Warning must also be given of the topic, ‘sight of any presentations, footage to be broadcast, etc’. A ‘risk assessment’ must be made on whether the meeting should be cancelled altogether, compelled to include an opposing speaker or (even more creepy) ‘someone in the audience to monitor the event’.

Institutions will be obliged to promote ‘British values’. These are defined as ‘democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance for those with different faiths and beliefs’. ‘Vocal and active opposition’ to any of these is now officially described as ‘extremism’.

Given authority’s general scorn for conservative Christianity, and its quivering, obsequious fear of Islam, it is easy to see how the second half will be applied in practice. As for ‘democracy’, plenty of people (me included) are not at all sure we have it, and wouldn’t be that keen on it if we did.

Am I then an ‘extremist’ who should be kept from speaking at colleges? Quite possibly. But the same paragraph (89, as it happens) goes further. ‘We expect institutions to encourage students to respect other people with particular regard to the protected characteristics set out in the Equality Act 2010’.

These ‘protected characteristics’, about which we must be careful not to be ‘extremist’, are in fact the pillars of political correctness – including disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, sex and sexual orientation.

The Bill is terrible in many other ways. And there is no reason to believe that any of these measures would have prevented any of the terrorist murders here or abroad, or will do so in future.

They have been lifted out of the box marked ‘try this on the Home Secretary during a national panic’, by officials who long to turn our free society into a despotism.

Once, there would have been enough wise, educated, grown-up people in both Houses of Parliament to stand up against this sort of spasm. Now most legislators go weak at the knees like simpering teenage groupies whenever anyone from the ‘Security’ or ‘Intelligence’ services demands more power and more money.

So far there has been nothing but a tiny mouse-squeak of protest against this dangerous, anti-British, concrete-headed twaddle. It will go through. And in ten years’ time we’ll wonder why we’re locking people up for thinking. We’ll ask: ‘How did that happen?’ This is how it happens.

British values...it's a baffling topic these days

You'd never guess just how few homosexuals there were from the way we go on about it.

In a spot check to make sure their Christian school was teaching ‘British values’, baffled tots in Sunderland were asked by government inspectors about ‘what lesbians do’.

Almost immediately after this revelation, plans were announced in Manchester for an entire school devoted to homosexual, bisexual and transgender children.

I’m not actually against such a school, if enough people want it. Let a hundred flowers bloom, as far as I’m concerned.

Let’s have atheist schools, too, and see how they work out.

But if we can select pupils on the grounds of their sexual orientation, why is it illegal to select on the grounds of ability? Something wrong here, surely?

As for the lesbian question, I was 12 before I even knew what a call-girl was, let alone a lesbian, and look how I turned out – not to mention my grasp of ‘British values’.

Finally a film that's got it right

For once, a film about real events that comes close to getting it right. The Theory Of Everything, a fictionalised but broadly true account of the marriage of Professor Stephen Hawking and his first wife Jane, is intelligent and profound, irresistibly moving andsurprisingly funny in places.

The recent past is subtly recreated. The plot pivots on the extraordinary fact that Mrs Hawking – an academic in her own right – maintained a Christian belief despite her husband’s active atheism.

Their marriage, her selfless love despite his illness, the marriage’s eventual breakdown, thedreadful contrast between Hawking’s soaring mind and his collapsing, failing body, mustconstantly have challenged the deepest beliefs of both of them.

Eddie Redmayne is, of course, superb as he inhabits the professor’s life and becomes him.But Felicity Jones is even better, and, rather surprisingly, manages to portray Jane as an even more remarkable human being than her husband.

Lethal cost of the great crime lie

Somehow the Government has so far kept the lid on the fact that despite fiddled figures claiming that crime is dropping, our prisons are full, and exploding with violence, gang rivalry and drugs.

Prison officers, the main civilising influence in these dreadful liberal institutions, are in growing danger of severe violence.

Ten are attacked every day. On Radio 4’s File On 4 on Tuesday, Peter McParlin, the chairman of the Prison Officers’ Association, said: ‘I wake up every morning thinking, “Today is the day one of my colleagues will be murdered in their work.” ’

This crisis is the result of 50 years of Left-wing failure, which has ensured that wrongdoers don’t encounter serious punishment until they are already hardened criminals.

If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down

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@Mr Bunker | 26 January 2015 at 04:03 PM

I thought this particular exchange had come to a close. All I can do is reiterate what I had said in an earlier comment. Note, Bunker, by definition, honourable ideals and good advice, by themselves, without reference to unalterable objective truth and a sense of personal, moral, accountability to an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent being representative of that truth can never be representative of true Christianity.

And if you seek Christianity bereft of the divine then all you will end up with is something without proper roots which will always be vulnerable to contemporary, subjective distortions and which will inevitably wither and fade with time.

Jesus Christ strongly warned those around Him of these dangers with his parables about the sowing of the seeds.

Were Jefferson's razors and scissors in action here ? And if not, he clearly did not understand what Christ truly meant.

And what you say in your final paragraph is totally devoid of logic.

"And what, pray, has that go to do with "liberal theology" (whatever that is)? Is it the purpose of theo-logy to convert people? I think not. - Converting people is surely the job of preachermen and missionaries."

I don't know what sort of wordplay you might be attempting Bunker, but, firstly, 'preachermen' and 'missionaries' need a definitive Christian message for their various works. Secondly many people have been converted by directly encountering the Word of God through the Bible or the writings of others and applying it to themselves from the perspective of the reality and experiences of their own lives.

And if you believe, Bunker, that ruthlessly editing the Bible so that it effectively says little more than - 'there was once an ordinary mortal man who lived two thousand years ago and who provided some very good advice to those around him' would confront and challenge people about the purpose and meaning of their own lives as they live now, in the context of their own relationship with God and, consequently, about their own eternal destiny - which original unaltered Christian scripture unequivocally does - then all I can suggest is that not only does your atheism shine forth here, Bunker, but also an incredible naivety concerning the basics of the human psyche.

Peter Charnley - I regret that you are unable to appreciate the Jefferson Bible. And I'm more than a little surpised that you say "nothing of any real substance has confronted" me - after all, the Jefferson Bible 'confronts' me with the teachings of Jesus. Are you saying they are of "no real substance"?

And what, pray, has that go to do with "liberal theology" (whatever that is)? Is it the purpose of theo-logy to convert people? I think not. - Converting people is surely the job of preachermen and missionaries.

Elaine - I won't come up with a long reply. I'll just say that to deny a connection between Islamist terrorism and Islam would be like hiding your head in the sand. I see a real danger looming.

But one other point, the "German journalist", Jürgen Todenhöfer, is a former very right-wing conservative Christian Democrat member of parliament. To call him a "journalist" doesn't do him credit. He is a much-traveled author of books mainly on the Middle East conflicts, Iran, Afganistan, the Iraq wars and now ISIS. He has traveled widely in the area over the past twenty years or so and is, I believe, the first Western "journalist" to actually have visited the so-called Islamic State and returned safely. I doubt there is anyone with a more profound knowledge of his field. Not everyone likes him because of his criticism of the West, in particular of the USA. But he is an honest, fearless analyst, and I believe he is a true Christian too. Don't dismiss him as any old journalist, and don't dismiss his interview-partner so lightly either. He is a highly intelligent German convert to Islam, now prominent in ISIS. Listen to what he says, and learn. (He doesn't just recite from the Koran, you know.)

“If you just assume them to be religious just because you hear them quote a few Islamic verses just shows that you are not willing to dig a bit deeper into their motives.”

Posted by: Elaine

This is a great point and again something that’s not raised enough. The next time a fawning BBC reporter interviews one of these rap loving masked IS dreamers; they should give them a little test (some hope). It’s a fair bet that the vast majority of these “devout” Muslim killers would be struck dumb if asked to recite the Al Fatihah in arabic, or just name Surah 19 of the Koran even.

It takes one to know one they say, and that couldn't apply more to true believers, who know immediately that these bloodthirsty murderers are not “one of them” as they say, why? because true faith in God and creation is wholly anathema to the killing of the innocent. The atheist who love to lump the two together should understand this unimpeachable fact.

"ISIS recruits have been found to be reading books like “Islam for Dummies”

By the same token those who are ignorant of faith are, for that very reason, easily fooled into believing IS represent religion. Perhaps Bunker/Godfrey et al should seek out books entitled “Religion for Dummies” or “Hypocrisy for Dummies” then perhaps their contributions might be worth considering.

@Bunker (who has had the decency to apologise)

Apology accepted, but mud sticks you know? As for your "My only excuse is your lumping together of Mr Godfrey and me" Well you did ask: "Dermot Doyle - is it OK if I answer the question you put to Mr Godfrey? It is? Good! (19 January 2015 at 09:51 PM)" You lumped yourself in with Mr Godfrey not I.

"I have taken great pleasure in reading the 'Jefferson Bible'. It is easy to read and in its clarity it gives an excellent insight into the teachings of Jesus. Which, I presume, is why it was considered suitable for distribution to new members of Congress in the USA - certainly not a country given to blasphemy or atheism."

Of course you will have taken pleasure in reading such literature, Bunker. You are, as you frequently inform myself and others, an atheist. And your various replies have simply confirmed for me the truth of the words of Vaughan Williams.

'Liberal theology is misleading and parasitical. It is parasitical because it fails to truly convert people. It fails to truly convert people because it fails to properly confront people about the world they are living in, about themselves and about their destiny.'

As an atheist, you found it 'easy to read', Bunker, because nothing of any real substance has confronted you.

And for whatever period and whosoever considered the Jefferson Bible appropriate as a gift of congressional initiation is completely irrelevant. Real scripture doesn't come with scissors and razors. God knows every hair on your head, every breath that you take and every thought that crosses your mind.

And, for reasons already explained in my last post - if anyone seeks a Christianity with a divine haircut then they simply will never become true Christians.

"He appears to be concerned with Islamic terrorists attacks in the UK. If we look worldwide we get a different picture"
Posted by: Mr. Bunker

The point was that extensive studies by MI5 ...(and I imagine the CIA would be doing the same. They need to understand what they are up against and most of them would not be "spooks" out in the field but probably doing exactly this kind of research)
.... The research has shown that those drawn to Islamic terrorism were not religious. Most of them were raised in very secular homes and were drawn into terrorist activities for other reasons. The religion is just an excuse. Most have a very superficial understanding of their religion. In fact, the new ISIS recruits have been found to be reading books like "Koran for Dummies" or "Islam for Dummies"

The research has not looked "worldwide to get a different picture" but there's no reason to believe it wouldn't be any different. The sample study was pretty large. So, some interviews by a German journalist, where we hear some killers rattle off a few verses from the Koran does not prove anything. If you just assume them to be religious just because you hear them quote a few Islamic verses just shows that you are not willing to dig a bit deeper into their motives.

Dermot Doyle - I've done what you suggested and taken another look at your comment and I must agree with you that I should not have used the word "bile". It was untoward, unnecessary and I'm sorry I used it. Your comments were no more beastly than many of mine have been in the past. I should have calmed down as I've told others to do. OK?

My only excuse is your lumping together of Mr Godfrey and me: 'Our' "shaky little stage" and 'our' notion of "unbridled atheism". I'm not sure what you mean by "unbridled", but Mr Godfrey and I are two different persons and it is a mistake to assume that our views are shared.

Having said that, let me reply to your claim that I "have completely ignored the facts and figures presented regarding secular war deaths and domestic murders and rapes". I answered in my post to you of 23.Jan/2.14pm (in which I regrettably used the word "bile").

Elaine - it may fascinate you, but in spite of your fascination you really should take a careful look at what Mr Sanders says. He appears to be concerned with Islamic terrorists attacks in the UK. If we look worldwide we get a different picture.

Elaine - how much of that applied to those who flew planes into the Twin Towers? Very little, if any, as far as I know. And to the ISIS-fighters? Same, I think.

So what are their motivations then? Well, one, for example, is the anger at the way the 'West' (in the eyes of the terrorists 'mainly Christian infidels') have treated the Islamic world in the past, more particularly in the past twenty-five years. (If you don't believe me, listen to the Todenhöfer interview.)

Another, for example, is a fundamentalistic understanding of the literal truth of the Koran and a hatred of non-believers that they interpret in it. Listen to that Todenhöfer interview if you don't believe me, Elaine.

And one more point. To judge from the criticism I get on the blog, you'd think I'm the only one to say, quite openly and unequivocally, that this terrorism DOES have something to do with Islam, and we should wake up to the danger. Others, far cleverer and better informed than I, have said the same thing. - Have you not noticed that, Elaine?

PS - of course "religious devotion simply does not correlate with violent radicalism". No one is claiming that.

Thanks for a very interesting post Elaine, we can live in hope that it gets through to Bunker and co, but they will be saying the same thing all over again next time.
Mr Bunker accuses me of spouting beastly bile. Well, the one advantage the written word has over the spoken, is it cannot be changed. Your the one in need of a chill pill sir, for nowhere in my writings on this thread have I spouted beastly bile. Go on, have another look! then you can apologise.
I note that while you claim yet another victory, you have completely ignored the facts and figures presented regarding secular war deaths and domestic murders and rapes (no answer perhaps?). Unshakable examples of the true causes of evil, an emphatic answer to yours and Godfrey's nonsense about religion.
Power, politics, greed and ambition, liberally seasoned with selfish cruelty. These are the just some of the many causes of human suffering, and there is only one cure; Faith with a certainty of accountability. Your time moves ever closer Mr Bunker.

Have a look at that Todenhöfer interview and come back and tell me what you think. It might change your view of whether Islam (or any religion) is motivation for terrorism. (No matter what that (apologist?) Canadian-British author says. His is only one view, you know.)

Next you'll be trying to convince me that beheading and stoning people, and flogging them for the slightest criticism of Islam, is not religiously motivated either!

I think perhaps one misunderstanding is that whilst such practices are perhaps not in accordance with the teachings of Islam (which is debatable), they are nevertheless committed by people in the name of Islam.

So, Elaine, don't be afraid to look the facts in the face. They are simple facts - but accepting them is not simplistic.

Peter Charnley - from your point of view you argue correctly. If you believe everything in the New and Old Testaments, if your regard it as incontrovertible historical proof, then you will argue as you do.

But I think you should concede that there are many people who disagree. And a lot more who have doubts about it. I would place Jefferson in the latter category.

When I said he 'leaves open' the question of Jesus' divinity, that is precisely what he does. As, I believe, some theologians do too.

If you agree with what I say, and I don't honestly see how you can disagree with it, then there is really no need to be upset. And it was certainly not my intention to upset, hurt or insult you, nor to shake your faith. I am just looking at the facts.

I have taken great pleasure in reading the 'Jefferson Bible'. It is easy to read and in its clarity it gives an excellent insight into the teachings of Jesus. Which, I presume, is why it was considered suitable for distribution to new members of Congress in the USA - certainly not a country given to blasphemy or atheism.

For anyone interested in what causes violent extremism I found an interesting article called "What Turns Some Western Muslims Into Terrorists? The Causes of Extremism", by Doug Sanders. He is a Canadian-British author and journalist who wrote a book "The Myth of the Muslim Tide"

After a decade of counter terrorism research, analyzing volumes of extremist literature, and interviewing thousands of former Jihadists and terror cell members two very solid conclusions have been reached:
"First, it is not generally devout or fundamentalist Muslims who become terrorists. Second, terrorists are driven by political belief, not by religious faith. "

He mentioned a very comprehensive and detailed significant profile of Islamic terrorists done by MI5 which concluded that:

".... four factors were leading to terrorist radicalization: “trauma,” such as the death of a loved one (10% of terror suspects had experienced this); immigration without family members (a third of extremists had “migrated to Britain alone” as students or labourers); “criminal activity” (two-thirds had criminal records); and “prison” (many were radicalized while serving time)....Indeed, religious devotion simply does not correlate with violent radicalism. "

Fascinating stuff Mr. Bunker, but if you want to continue with your simplistic narrative, go ahead.

"His only 'sin' is to see Christ as a great human teacher of the highest morality rather than as the Son of God of miraculous birth, performing miracles and rising again from the dead. If I understand him correctly, he leaves that question totally open (which I believe some 'modern' theologians do too)."

A section of my previously quoted text about Jefferson:-

"If necessary to exclude the miraculous, Jefferson would cut the text even in mid-verse." Historian Edwin Scott Gaustad explains, "If a moral lesson was embedded in a miracle, the lesson survived in Jeffersonian scripture, but the miracle did not. Even when this took some rather careful cutting with scissors or razor, Jefferson managed to maintain Jesus' role as a great moral teacher, not as a shaman or faith healer.”

People who wish to genuinely leave things 'open', Bunker, do not apply scissors and razors to the Bible. Personal decisions about belief should be made by each individual as they read scripture as it was originally intended and written - the only permissible change being that of translation into different languages.

And if Jefferson was a naturalist who could not accept the supernatural then he was not a true Christian. The very essence of Christianity involves the divinity of Jesus Christ. His unique relationship with God, the reason why He was sent into this world to live and suffer as a human being, to be persecuted by other men, to be killed by them and, ultimately, to demonstrate victory over evil and death by being resurrected and to appear, later, to the very people who had doubted and denied Him - along with thousands of others who were not His immediate associates.

If you cannot accept that then you deny everything that makes Christianity what it truly is. An ultimate promise that cannot possibly be realised by passing Christ off as simply a good man who issued some good advice to others - revolutionary for his day, honourably applicable to the thereafter.

The latter cannot possibly (particularly centuries after that person's death) cause people to put themselves fully under the moral microscope of Christian belief and to fully realise what is fundamentally at stake for them.

The Old Testament foretells the coming of Jesus Christ. The New Testament testifies as to the fulfilment of that prophecy. Christ said 'Before Abraham I am' .

If you take scissors and razors to such words. To His miracles, His resurrection and to His unique divine relationship as the Son of God - you are not leaving anything open, Bunker. You are slamming shut the very door that leads to steadfast, fundamental, change for all whom you tragically mislead. Applicable to Thomas Jefferson and to many modern theologians.

Dermot Doyle - why don't you just calm down and - however difficult you may find it - try to think rationally and without religous prejudice. And please don't link me with Mr Godfrey. I'm an individual in my own right, you know.

You get all upset - I'm not quite sure about what but perhaps because I have pointed out how religous faith (and secular faith too) have so often been motivation for evil deeds. Are you denying that. No? l thought not, because it is clearly true. For example, the belief in Nazism or in Marxism-Leninism was motivation for endless misery and death. But it was a belief - a faith, if you like, that was the motivation. And, Dermot, you ignore the fact that I've said on the blog - so many times that you ought to have noticed by now.

So what are you getting upset about. Murders and rapes, child abuse perhaps, or thefts and frauds? Well, there's no way of knowing whether those who commited them were religous believers or pesky atheists. Now is there, Dermot?

So what are you spewing so much bile about? I happen to be a perfectly normal, happy, peace-loving, individual, who tries to be polite and help others in spite of the fact that I can't believe the stories the preachermen tell. That's all. So - why so beastly, Dermot.? It's not very nice, you know.

I would imagine there are far more wartime memories put into print which set out an image of courage, victory and a certain level of glory - that would clearly be natural and takes nothing from such authors. However, to balance that, it would seem there are many who never wanted to dwell on their wartime experiences, some due to the sheer horror of war, others perhaps who never engaged in close action (the majority, perhaps?), and some who could make no sense of military life or their role in it.
The Boer War was very much about greed and who gets what - the later event you mention was mainly about keeping our hands on what was never rightly ours in the first place.
As to 'passion and bravery' they are surely not unique to one side or the other, are they?

Dermot Doyle - I'm pleased you took the trouble to look at that Todenhöfer video. But please don't make the mistake of dismissing the jihadist as a psychopath. He is no more a psychopath that any other fanatical believer of any religion. Indeed he is - according to Todenhöfer - a highly intelligent individual.

I agree entirely with you that he is in absolutely no way representative of Islam. But my point is simply that his motivation lies in that religion - deluded though that motivation may be. If you listened to the whole of the interview, you will have seen how he justifies all he says (and all he does) by referring to the Koran or the Prophet. Do you think he was lying? I don't. But deluded - yes.

I'd like to hear other opinions too - but no one else seems to have bothered to look at the interview.

John - my thanks for those interesting comments and I accept the points you make about religion being a possible (but of course not necessary) motivation for terrorism. I venture to suggest that we might even agree that all too strong (fundamental) belief/faith in either a religious or secular belief system can - not must - be a motivation for violence on 'infidels'.

John and Peter Charnley - Jefferson was certainly a Christian in the sense that he believed in the moral teachings of Christ. He is not an enemy of Christendom. His only 'sin' is to see Christ as a great human teacher of the highest morality rather than as the Son of God of miraculous birth, performing miracles and rising again from the dead. If I understand him correctly, he leaves that question totally open (which I believe some 'modern' theologians do too).

I don't think he ever called his little book a 'bible'. He called it 'The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth'. It is now goes under the title: 'The Jefferson Bible - The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth", available on the internet for just 3 or 4 euros/pounds/dollars. Whether you agree with his standpoint or not, it makes a good read.

Alan Thomas, thank you for your reply. I agree with you. There were other more prosaic reasons for men to go to war as you have said. But i have seen old survivors re-telling their stories and I am often struck by the sense of duty and patriotism in them. I've read some accounts of the Boer War as I have an interest in Africa having visited a number of times and had family living there until recently. I also met men who had fought in Rhodesia in the early 1980's and their passion (and bravery) too was inspiring.

"Do you seriously mean to suggest that all strife and all wars be religious?"

Peter Preston.

Thanks for this, it's similar to my earlier (but lost into blog apocripha) reply to Bunker. I had a quick google, and a conservative ratio is about a thousand secular war dead for every one so-called religious victim, and that knocks Messrs Bunker and Godfrey's notion into a cocked hat.
Civilian homicide murders alone (ten million last century) dwarf religious war dead. What about rapes? 25,000 last year here in civilised Britain. The true figure is probably three times that, and that's around 200 a day. 200 hundred a day! in your beloved secular PC heaven Mr Bunker, and what are we doing about it?: Making all cigarette packets plain. Oh yes; get the priorities right.

Messrs Godfrey and Bunker should get off their shaky little stage and face up to the truth of unbridled atheism.

Mike, you are right you don't. I've said it before and I'll say it again, you are my favourite atheist on this blog and I believe I owe you an apology. That question should have been addressed directly to the cowardly Mr Godfrey, but it wasn't. My bad. Perhaps we can both agree ...

'We're out of control on this looney balloon
Narrowly missing the planets and stars.
Even the optimists say that it's all gloom and doom
We've got to get somewhere or hit something soon.'

"Remember the stories of those who suffered at the football stadium after the New Orleans flood, when there was no law and order for a week or so. After a couple of days quite a lot of previously law abiding citizens turned into very nasty characters indeed"
Posted by: Dermot Doyle

In that setting they probably would have felt very fortunate to run into some true Christians. Right?

Of course, the rationalist Jefferson was quite out of touch with how early Christians and Jews of the period saw the world. They did not need Plato to tell them that there was a world of the spirit. Someone who can read the gospels and think that the non-naturalist, non-humanist parts are not basic to the life and message of Christ is not fit to propound upon Biblical exegesis. If anything, the subtleties he is referring to - presumably the pronouncements of the councils and Fathers - were an effort to make flesh out Christian truth using discursive reason and dogmatic theology according to the needs of an Imperial religion. Ante-Nicene and Apostolic Christianity was even more mystical, even more content to accept Christianity as a way, not a discursive philosophy, and whose truth was to be experienced through initiation and the mysteries or sacraments, rather than learned in extensive rational form.

I agree that these terrorists are motivated strongly by their brand of Islam. You will not find disagreement from me there. There are distinctions to be made between those, like the recent Sydney terrorist, who are somewhat unhinged, and more stable individuals, like those in Paris. We must also remember abstract beliefs do not act. Real individuals do, and they have complex social and psychological motivations besides their religious beliefs. But you will not find me disagreeing that these terrorists are significantly influenced by their brand of Islam.

However, what one takes away from this as far as it concerns religion as a whole, and how to judge it, is incredibly complex. It is certainly not enough, as our hosts brother liked to do, to say that some religious people did such and such a heinous act, therefore all religion is bad.

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